CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. – A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket successfully launched two communications satellites at 10:29 a.m. EDT Wednesday, but failed to land the rocket's first stage booster on a barge in the Atlantic Ocean.

SpaceX Falcon 9 from 5,000 feet/Emery JeffreysIt streaked into the sky from Florida's Cape Canaveral Air Force Station on time at the beginning of a two-hour launch window.

About 2.5 minutes later, the rocket's two stages separated as planned. The first stage turned around and headed back to Earth for a failed landing on a barge. The upper stage continued carrying the two satellites in to a geostationary orbit 22,300 miles over the equator.

SpaceX warned that the high velocity and reentry heat the rocket will experience because of its high-orbit delivery will make it difficult to "stick" the landing. A stick landing is succesful

About nine minutes after the launch, the first stage descended to the deck of the barge. “Of Course I Still Love You” a few hundred miles east of the coast just as SpaceX's live video feed went dead.